live in the now

A man named Paul sat next to me in my cubicle earlier. We were having what we called a ‘heart to heart’, when really he was hiding from his boss. Something he said, though, made me look up from my mountain of paperwork…”There are only three seconds in life, you know. Past, present, future. You have to put away your past to get to the present, and make decisions now to get to your future. That’s all there is.” And with that, he smiled, told me to have a good day, and walked away. He put into words so simply what I have been trying to do for years. Store it away, live in the moment. Can anyone really do this? I’ve always thought the past makes up who we are, which is why I am so reluctant to let go of it…but I am beginning to believe that maybe we are different people at any given moment and all of that backwash doesn’t even matter.

“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”